The present invention relates to streaming media, and more particularly to a streaming media quality analyzer system for measuring the quality of reception at remote sites.
Media service providers (MSPs) have a goal of providing customers with streaming media, such as video/audio data, over a network, such as the Internet. Because of bandwidth limitations of the network and the wide bandwidth nature of video data, for example, data compression is required, such as MPEG2 and the like, to reduce the bandwidth of the data to fit within the bandwidth constraints of the network. The compressed data is packetized and transported over the network to the customer at a remote site. The streaming nature of video favors using connectionless data packets, such as UDP packets, for sending the video packets over the network. Being connectionless, the UDP packets do not assure that all of the packets are received by the customer. If some of the packets are lost or displaced as a result of network losses, when decoded these packets produce defective data, such as impaired video. This is an irritant to the customer, and therefore the MSP needs to determine when there are network problems that are affecting the quality of the streaming media as viewed by the customer. Alternatively using TCP/IP protocol, occasional loss of a packet maps into a delay in packet delivery, as the missing packet gets re-transmitted.
What is desired is a streaming media quality analyzer system that detects when defective data is being received by the customer so that a media service provider can take steps to remedy the situation and alleviate the irritant to the customer.